<p>The U.K. fintech sector is on a bit of a roll. Allica Bank — a London-based fintech — recently announced it had doubled its profits in 2024, bringing in £29.9 million, while neobank Revolut announced a £1 billion profit in 2024. Companies of this nature continue to spring out of London, a city that has become a [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Flex, a startup that offers personal finance software for business owners, has acquired Maza, a finance app aimed at Spanish speakers in the U.S., for $40 million, the companies told TechCrunch exclusively. At first glance, the pairing may seem a bit curious. Flex’s software and payments infrastructure is to help business owners have a single [&hellip;]</p>

<p>After a sluggish couple of years, fintech appears to be making a comeback. In the first quarter of 2025, fintech startups globally raised a combined $10.3 billion &#8212; marking the highest level of funding since the first quarter of 2023, according to CB Insights research. The average deal size of $17.7 million also marked the [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Alpaca said on Wednesday it has raised a $52M Series C round to expand into more foreign markets, including the Middle East, Europe and Asia.</p>

<p>Expense management startup Ramp is being considered for a charge card pilot program by the U.S. government’s General Services Administration, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Thursday. The government’s internal expense card program, dubbed SmartPay, is a $700 billion program. It is estimated that the charge card pilot program contract for which Ramp is being [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Ryan Breslow is officially back. While the founder of one-click checkout company Bolt re-assumed its helm as CEO in March, Breslow is unveiling Wednesday a new “superapp” that he hopes will formally mark his return as the fintech’s leader. He describes the new product as “one-click crypto and everyday payments” in a single platform, in [&hellip;]</p>

<p>When Visa invested in Nigerian fintech Moniepoint earlier this year, it didn’t just validate the newly minted unicorn — it signaled a bold new direction. As part of that deal, the Nigerian fintech best known for building one of Africa’s largest business banking platforms, hinted at plans to integrate with Visa Direct, a move that [&hellip;]</p>

<p>U.K. startup Marshmallow has blown up over the years by using innovations in data science to build car insurance policies for immigrants and other consumers who have been overlooked or priced out of traditional insurance. Now, with a million drivers insured and a profitable annual revenue run rate of $500 million, Marshmallow has raised a [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Digital payments platform Stripe invites customers to join its management team meetings on a bi-weekly basis so it can get “candid feedback,” according to co-founder Patrick Collison. In an April 8 post on X, the fintech giant’s CEO said the company has a customer join for the first 30 minutes of the meeting, which is [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Jobandtalent, an AI-based “workforce as a service” marketplace that connects people with companies looking for hourly workers, announced it has raised €92 million ($103 million).&nbsp; The Series F — which includes participation from Atomico, BlackRock, DN Capital, Hercules, Infravia, Kibo,&nbsp;and&nbsp;Kinnevik — values the Madrid, Spain-based company at €1.3 billion ($1.5 billion) post-money.&nbsp; On the surface, [&hellip;]</p>

<p>How do you get talented engineers to work for a startup in a mundane field at a time when more exciting companies are paying well and hiring aggressively? Here’s an answer from one insurance startup out of Poland called Ominimo: make pay competitive, but more importantly, give those engineers the license to apply their talent [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Banking-as-a-service startup Solid (formerly called Wise) has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, according to documents filed in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware on April 7. Founded in 2018, the fintech company had raised a total of nearly $81 million in funding from investors such as FTV Capital and Headline. [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Last week, prediction market startup Kalshi sued New Jersey and Nevada after they tried to shut down its recently launched sports trading operation. In the lawsuit, Kalshi claimed that, since they&#8217;re a federally regulated platform, state gaming commissions don&#8217;t have the authority to set rules for them. &#8220;We&#8217;re not necessarily very concerned [because] we are [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Last week, details emerged about an application that fintech giant Stripe had submitted for a U.S. banking license. There was a lot of chatter on X about whether this meant Stripe &#8212; already the largest privately valued fintech in the world &#8212; would now be adding &#8220;bank&#8221; to the list of descriptions of what it [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Rain, a startup offering an employer-integrated earned wage access (EWA) app coupled with financial-wellness features like overdraft alerts and spending trends, has raised $75 million in an all-equity Series B round. The round was led by Prosus at a post-money valuation of $340 million. Rain plans to use the new funds to help it add [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Billing itself as &#8220;Stripe for emerging markets,&#8221; Turkish fintech Sipay has raised a $78 million Series B funding round, claiming a valuation of $875 million in the process. This round is significant, as Sipay plans to expand into markets outside of Turkey, offering additional services like remittances that Stripe currently does not offer in those [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Elisabeth Diana, head of communications at human resources platform Deel, is no longer with the company, according to her LinkedIn profile. Bloomberg first reported the news that Diana had resigned from Deel, which was recently accused of planting a spy at rival company Rippling. TechCrunch reached out to Diana but had not heard back at [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Since IPOs slowed to trickle a few years ago, limited partners who invest in venture capital funds have had one giant problem: a dearth of liquidity. Lack of cash returns has been especially troublesome for wealthy individuals or their small family offices — who manage the assets of the wealthy — that made substantial investments [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Expanding into the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) remains a costly and complex challenge for global businesses, thanks to fragmented regulations and banking systems. Dubai-based fintech Fuse aims to simplify that with a cross-border payments API and has raised $6.6 million in seed funding to make it happen. Founded in 2023 by CEO George [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Plaid, which connects bank accounts to financial applications, has sold about $575 million worth of common stock at a $6.1 billion post-money valuation, the fintech company confirmed to TechCrunch. The valuation is about less than half of the $13.4 billion that San Francisco-based Plaid was valued at when it raised a $425 million Series D [&hellip;]</p>